


The Second First Time

by dulceflowercrowns



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: "Timmy's in my childhood memories", M/M, Mushy, Short & Sweet, Soul Bond, Unrequited Love, idk yall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 00:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18128516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dulceflowercrowns/pseuds/dulceflowercrowns
Summary: I thought back and he was there, in all my childhood memories, and he was there while I remembered them, and he was there for more.Or, I write a short thingy because of that one time Timmy said it felt like him and Armie knew each other for 7 years and Armie said that Timmy was in his childhood memories... enjoy?





	The Second First Time

**Author's Note:**

> yall remember that interview... well I got soft so here's Armie's P.O.V. basically elaborating on what he said, totally false and made up by a super emo me.
> 
> its confusing and scrambled and rn half asleep with a mouth full of cheesecake it reads like an artistic thought process but its probably just proper shite

I didn't wanna know that what I was expecting from him was too much by asking for it, so I never did in front or away from the cameras. I let his arrival in my thoughts, my imaginings, most coveted at my doorstep be a pleasant surprise and pretended like I didn't count on them to get me through each and every day of my past. I'd survived them all but couldn't if he didn't come around and join me for the second first time.

I thought back and he was there, in all my childhood memories, and he was there while I remembered them, and he was there for more. I didn't ask, but he wouldn't be there unless he wanted to be. Unless he'd let me in enough to know how to add him to every scene in my mind's reel. How to crop him into every nightstand polaroid and manipulate pixels until he was there in all the home videos. We messed with time and space until Crema was a fog of dejavu. Just a look across a room and I'd be reminded that I lived him all before.

Maybe I twisted what was happening to fit my dreams. Sometimes I couldn't tell the difference between the two. The line dividing reality from some fairytale my mind came up with late at night, body half out the water we weren't allowed in past 9, listening when he said to close my eyes the next time we go under so I could feel like I was flying- it got so blurry sometimes. The islands reminded me of Crema or Crema reminded me of the islands. My head would go under and I'd close my eyes and I'd be a boy and a man, locking ankles with his, arms out like wings, too pudgy to be Armie or too tall to be little Armand. Too something to be what I wanted but always just right to be with him.

I don't know what we said and can barely think of what we did, but I remember piano playing and stolen wine. Senseless childish key clunks but then Ryuichi Sakamoto, mother's moscato before bed but then Luca's pinot noir after dinner. Like I said, the lines are too blurred. I got the worst toothaches those summers, they were so sweet and rich. They are so sweet and rich. This one was.

One moment he's my best friend and the next I'm trying to remind myself he isn't something more. We were strangers in school, in Hollywood, but when spring reached its dusk every year we met again. We made pacts to stick together till the end of time but couldn't remember how far back it all began. Sometimes I thought we were one in the same and that terrified me. Because that would mean I was alone. Just me, without him, smiling at an empty space with the love Sayombhu filtered through his lens and Luca sharpened with the word "Action!". But he was in my memories so I wasn't alone. Like how on those bike rides through Italian countrysides I wasn't alone. I'm not alone.

It was never too hot for our bodies to be each other's company, whether we were curled together on a lazyboy in my father's den or he was stepping on my feet to escape the burn of roasted cement. We always shied together, buried into sea salt skin and sandy curls. Always blushed on the same surfaces like mirror images. Always met palm to palm, fingers interlocked where the pages of my photo albums and our magazine press spreads couldn't see.

But one thing separates the two, cuts down the middle between then and now. What I've imagined and what I've lived only cease to fuse with this one thought:

The image of his lips meeting mine or mine meeting his without the ruse of a script.

In that thought alone I can only find the shimmery veil of a wish. It's never warm enough, never solid enough to be real. It's the only thing I haven't asked for and he hasn't figured to know. Or if he knows, it's the only thing he won't give me.

So I never ask or expect it. And I pretend like I don't count on a waning possibility to get me through this day and the next. I pretend it won't kill me when it all stops and these memories are sealed off as something I can only remember, but never live again. We pretend that our Crema will last forever, and we've done such a good job of it that we can't remember a time before.

"We've spent 7 years together," he says.

"I’ve spent so much time with Timmy, that I go back and think of memories from childhood and Timothée is also there." I say.

There are smiles on our faces and in our eyes, and it's all I need to remember I've lived him before. I survived him before. Maybe I'll get my wish in our third first time, but for now I've had him twice more than anyone else.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah idk, all feedback is appreciated and welcome! thanks for reading! xxx


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